Were There WMD in Iraq?

If Dave Gaubatz is correct, there were.

Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.

This was, in the first place, because of the massive size of these sites and the extreme lengths to which the Iraqis had gone to conceal them. Three of them were bunkers buried 20 to 30 feet beneath the Euphrates. They had been constructed through building dams which were removed after the huge subterranean vaults had been
excavated so that these were concealed beneath the river bed. The bunker walls were made of reinforced concrete five feet thick.

‘There was no doubt, with so much effort having gone into hiding these
constructions, that something very important was buried there’, says Mr Gaubatz. By speaking to a wide range of Iraqis, some of whom risked their lives by talking to him and whose accounts were provided in ignorance of each other, he built up a picture of the nuclear, chemical and biological materials they said were buried underground.

‘They explained in detail why WMDs were in these areas and asked the US to
remove them,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘Much of this material had been buried in the concrete bunkers and in the sewage pipe system. There were also missile imprints in the area and signs of chemical activity — gas masks, decontamination kits, atropine needles. The Iraqis and my team had no doubt at all that WMDs were hidden there.’

There was yet another significant piece of circumstantial corroboration. The medical
records of Mr Gaubatz and his team showed that at these sites they had been exposed to high levels of radiation.

And what happened to these WMD?

The problem was that the ISG were concentrating their efforts in looking for WMD in northern Iraq and this was in the south,’ says Mr Gaubatz. ‘They were just swept up by reports of WMD in so many different locations. But we told them that if they didn’t excavate these sites, others would.’

That, he says, is precisely what happened. He subsequently learnt from Iraqi, CIA and British intelligence that the WMD buried in the four sites were excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with help from the Russians, and moved to Syria. The location in Syria of this material, he says, is also known to these intelligence agencies. The worst-case scenario has now come about. Saddam’s nuclear, biological and chemical material is in the hands of a rogue terrorist state — and one with close links to Iran.

So the Russians, who are currently building a heavy water nuclear reactor for the Iranians at Bushehr and are currently blocking efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear program helped transport Saddam's WMD to Syria, Iran's closest ally.

Of course, all this assumes Gaubatz is right. As someone who already believed Saddam's WMD had made their way into Syria, I'm inclined to believe him. What's more, his account of why the WMD weren't found there tracks pretty well with what we already know about the performance of both the intelligence community and the Coalition Provisional Authority. His account would also explain how insurgent groups in Iraq were able to get their hands on the chlorine gas that have been used in several truck bombs detonated in Iraq, though it would also raise the question of why nothing more potent has been used.

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